Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.(Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last.(Friends of Israel Initiative)

Wednesday, 30 August 2017

Here's the guy who gives a whole new meaning to the term "football fanatic", before the game at Watford last Saturday with the usual Israel-demonising blarney and accompanying banners and leaflets.

Crowds are noticeably absent ("Maintenance work on the train network in preparation for
Crossrail probably kept a lot of supporters away", explains video-maker Alex Seymour/Seymour Alexander in uploading the footage to YouTube.)

The campaign to expel Israel from FIFA has hit a snag, and the star of the video forlornly fumes against UEFA.

Tuesday, 29 August 2017

In the wake of events in Charlottesville, the current issue of the Australian Jewish News (AJN) contains the results of an online poll among its readers: "Are you concerned about the rise of the far right?"

Those results, given in percentages, are 58 per cent responding in the affirmative, and 42 per cent in the negative.

Since in practice anyone can respond to these AJN polls (anti-Israel lefties sometimes alert their followers to them on social media, the better to distort the results) this may or may not represent a true cross-section of communal opinion.

At the same time, as an indication of communal vox populi, the oral answers of five named and photographed Jewish members of the public to the question posed in the poll are given on that same page. All five are indeed concerned about the rise of the far right, which is fair enough, but two of the five respondents appear to be somewhat confused:

"Yes I am. It is happening in Barcelona ..."

"It does concern me, but in Australia it's not as bad as the USA or Europe."

Such naivity. Such ignorance. Evidently, those respondents are unaware of the findings of the recently-published study by University of Oslo academic Dr Johannes Due Enstad entitled Antisemitic Violence in Europe, 2005-2015, which finds Muslims, not the far right, chiefly responsible for antisemitic hate crimes in every country except Russia.

'....Who is responsible for the attacks on Jews? In every country studied, except for Russia, the perpetrators are disproportionately of Muslim backgrounds. A British study cited in the University of Oslo report notes that the proportion of Muslim perpetrators increases in the wake of “trigger events” in the Middle East.

In what might be considered a clumsy attempt to downplay anti-Semitism, German authorities do not classify anti-Israeli incidents as anti-Semitism. This results in absurdity. A Muslim firebombing of a synagogue can be classified as an anti-Israeli event, but not anti-Semitic. If any country should know better, it should be Germany. Is Kristallnacht going to be reinterpreted as not anti-Semitism, but a demonstration for racial purity?

The only country where anti-Semitic incidents are not disproportionately perpetrated by Muslims is Russia, and it is the only country in the University of Oslo study where Jews do not fear to express their Jewish identity when appearing in public. This appears to perplex the study’s author, as Russia contains both large Jewish and Muslim populations.

Yet the issue is easily resolved. In Russia, the large Muslim and Jewish populations live in the same country, but are generally separated by a vast expanse of land. Most Muslims live in the Eurasian Caucasus region. Most Jews live in Moscow and Saint Petersburg....'

In 2015 no less than 10,000 Western European Jews made aliya, and many more are thinking of emigrating. The reason is not far to seek.

Below, a 78-minute video re antisemitism in the 21st century, and a 48-minute one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynktmneLRi4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5SjRxHJCQw

As so often, the depth of the burgeoning threats to European civilisation posed by replacement demography is excellently and articulately expressed by the courageous Douglas Murray; in this worthwhile 13-minute video he reminds his audience (approx. 5:04) that he has no Israel to which to escape:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=523UhYqYX_g

It is a lesson that, for their progeny's sake if not for their own, all Europeans (and other free peoples) should heed.

Monday, 28 August 2017

Here's the latest article by Australian lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas seems set once again to embark on another futile journey to the United Nations (UN) seeking recognition of a second Arab state – in addition to Jordan – within the territory comprised in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

“If we don’t hear within a month and a half that the American team has stopped talking and started doing, Abbas intends to mobilize anyone and everyone he can for the UN General Assembly session on the establishment of a Palestinian state, regardless of the Israeli and American reactions”

President Trump was quick to respond – State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert telling a press briefing on 23 August in answer to a question as to why America was loath to commit – or recommit - to the two-state solution:

“We are not going to state what the outcome has to be. It has to be workable to both sides. And I think, really, that’s the best view as to not really bias one side over the other, to make sure that they can work through it. It’s been many, many decades, as you well know, that the parties have not been able to come to any kind of good agreement and sustainable solution to this. So we leave it up to them to be able to work that through.”

Negotiations – suspended since April 2014 – extending over the past 24 years between Israel and the PLO have not produced any workable and sustainable solution. Abbas is clearly in no mood to resume those negotiations without preconditions.

A replay of Abbas’s appearance at the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2011 therefore seems inevitable. Israel’s Prime Minister – Benjamin Netanyahu – was quick to point out at that time how automatic majorities at the UN had been used to incite institutionalised hatred against Israel.

“After all, it was here in 1975 that the age-old yearning of my people to restore our national life in our ancient biblical homeland – it was then that this was braided – branded, rather – shamefully, as racism. And it was here in 1980, right here, that the historic peace agreement between Israel and Egypt wasn’t praised; it was denounced! And it’s here year after year that Israel is unjustly singled out for condemnation. It’s singled out for condemnation more often than all the nations of the world combined. Twenty-one out of the 27 General Assembly resolutions condemn Israel – the one true democracy in the Middle East.

Well, this is an unfortunate part of the UN institution. It’s the – the theatre of the absurd. It doesn’t only cast Israel as the villain; it often casts real villains in leading roles:

You might say: That’s the past. Well, here’s what’s happening now – right now, today. Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon now presides over the UN Security Council. This means, in effect, that a terror organisation presides over the body entrusted with guaranteeing the world’s security.

You couldn’t make this thing up.

So here in the UN, automatic majorities can decide anything. They can decide that the sun sets in the west or rises in the west. I think the first has already been pre-ordained. But they can also decide – they have decided that the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest place, is occupied Palestinian territory.”

This theatre of the absurd seems set to be repeated once again at the forthcoming 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly.

Israel-bashing can never resolve the 100-years-old Jewish-Arab conflict.

Saturday, 26 August 2017

This broadcast aired on Jordanian television a couple of months ago, and has just come to light thanks to Memri.org, which finds and translates such instances of Jew-hatred in the Muslim world.

To quote Memri TV, in uploading it to YouTube:

'A
Jordanian TV channel recently aired a program about the Rothschild
family, according to which it was "the founder of the United States" and
owned much of the world's resources, media, and banks. The show
included an interview with Jordanian economic analyst Mohammad Sami
Abugoush, who said that "any leader who refused to deal with the
Rothschilds would be assassinated." Abugoush and TV host Rita Altaji
agreed that it was Rothschild, and not President Macron, who ruled
France, and that "even the U.S. and the mighty British royal family do
not rule Britain." She and her guest concurred that the Rothschilds
assassinated U.S. Presidents Lincoln, Kennedy, Garfield, Harrison,
Tyler, and Jackson. Abugoush further said that the Jews control the
weapon, pharmaceutical, shipping, and agricultural industries, and are
withholding the cure for cancer and AIDS from the world in order to make
a profit. The show aired on Altaghier TV on June 24'.

Friday, 25 August 2017

Scrutinising the Facebook associations of Canadian MP Niki Ashton (New Democratic Party), who recently on the campaign trail disavowed the support of a Holocaust-denying Muslim publisher, Sheila Gunn Reid of the imperilled Rebel.media is convinced that while antisemitism i entrenched on the fringes of the Far Right movement, it flourishes on the Left, where it lurks behind the banner of 'Peace and Justice':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oJQRYj4J-U

For more on the troubles besetting The Rebel, here's Ezra Levant, who stresses that he and his cohorts are emphatically not alt-right, white supremacist, or antisemitic:

Wednesday, 23 August 2017

Outside Wembley Stadium in London on 20 August, Israel haters familiar and not so familiar appear in this by no means uninteresting footage by video-maker and staunch BDSer Alex Seymour/Seymour Alexander, according to whom (we don't see them, unfortunately) pro-Israel passers-by made their feelings known.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWEpdgp9fZE

There's the loquacious Irishman who constantly campaigns to have Israel thrown out of Fifa (the campaign literature has now been translated into several languages, we hear him say.

There's the rather plummy-voiced grey-haired lady who's a ubiquitous sidekick to Sandra Watfa (the lady seen on many a Seymour video who inveighs against Israel at countless demos in London including, this year, the Al Quds Day excrescence). Here outside the stadium Sandra's sidekick is seen handing out leaflets to football fans arriving for the game.

Another familiar Israel-hater is the little lady of Jewish origin whose "Israel is an apartheid state" spiel in front of Seymour's lens includes a plaintive charge that "The media seem to focus on how wonderful Israel is". (Ever watched the BBC, darling?)*

A young woman in sun glasses tells Seymour that she has been "a life-long supporter of Palestine," that "Unfortunately they [those pesky Zionists] have a lot of support, a lot of power ... a lot of lobbying, a lot of power" and asserts that, to turn the tide, "We need to support Jeremy Corbyn — back him all the way ..."

But my favourite scene in the video comes when Seymour asks a darkly handsome young man in a keffiyah, who's expressed appreciation of the demo, "Where are you from?"

"I'm from Gaza" the smiling young man replies.

"You managed to get out?"

"Yah!" the Gazan readily assures Seymour. He'll be returning home in a month's time.

(Not the answer to the Israel-haters' prayers, eh, undermining as it does the "Gaza is a prison" trope that's part and parcel of their bag of tricks.)

*Talking of the BBC, see BBC Watch here for the despicable claim of BBC World Service correspondent Max Pearson that ".... Just the phrase ‘tension in the Middle East’ has become shorthand for referencing the decades of mistrust between Jews and Arabs following the creation of the State of Israel, carved – as it was – out of land which had belonged to the Palestinians...."

Monday, 21 August 2017

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

The planned visit to the Middle East at the end of August by President Trump’s Senior Advisor Jared Kushner, Special Envoy for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt and Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy Dina Powell, presents a wonderful opportunity for them to test the commitment of the PLO and its leader Mahmoud Abbas to concluding a peace treaty with Israel.

Abbas needs to confirm or reject his following remarks reported on 11 January 2014:

“Referring to Israeli demands to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Abbas said, “This is a story that we have heard only in the last two years. We won’t recognize and accept the Jewishness of Israel. We have many excuses and reasons that prevent us from doing so.”

Abbas was speaking during a meeting in his office with dozens of east Jerusalem residents. Israel’s problem is that the Palestinians know more than the Israelis about history and geography, he said.

“We talk about what we know,” he said. “We won’t accept the Jewishness of Israel. We are asking for the 1967 borders.”

Abbas and the PLO should be asked to amplify these remarks by written responses to the following questions:

1. On the Jewishness of Israel:

What excuses and reasons do you have for refusing to recognize and accept the Jewishness of Israel?

“The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world.

Exiled from Palestine, the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restoration of their national freedom.”

“Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.”

II. Did the boundaries of Palestine during the British Mandate encompass what is known today as Israel, Jordan, Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza?

III. Did 78 per cent of the British Mandate territory become the sovereign independent Arab State called ”The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan” in 1946?

4. On asking for the 1967 borders:

Are you aware that:

I. the “1967 borders” are in fact the “1949 Armistice Demarcation Lines” delineated under an agreement signed on 3 April 1949 between The Government of the Hashemite Jordan Kingdom and the Government of Israel (Armistice Agreement)

II. Article VI (9) of the Armistice Agreement provided:

“The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto”.

If Abbas and the PLO can’t provide satisfactory answers – then Trump will be wasting his time trying to jumpstart negotiations – stalled since April 2014 – between Israel and the PLO – since those negotiations will assuredly end up going nowhere like previous PLO – Israel negotiations conducted during the last 24 years. Jailed PLO terrorists and families of deceased terrorists still receive life-time payments for murdering Jews – rebuffing Trump’s demand they cease.

Friday, 18 August 2017

In the Australian Senate on Thursday, a bizarre-looking, frankly scary, figure with the look of a big black crow sits in the chamber, having been let in with scarcely a concern for security.

An assurance from an acquaintance that the figure draped in what resembles a garbage bag was who she purported to be was enough to allow the figure to slip in, with no demand that she reveal her face.

The figure was, it soon transpired, indeed the controversial Senator Pauline Hanson, whose wrapping herself in a burqa stunt was performed in order to demonstrate just how lax security in the Australian Parliament is, and to request of Attorney-General George Brandis during Question Time an assurance that, given the terror threat, wearing the burqa be banned in public places in Australia.

As seen on video, George Brandis was not amused by Ms Hanson's stunt and unmoved by her request. Not that Brandis was unmoved, mark you: his voice trembled and tears bid fair to trickle down his cheeks as he berated Ms Hanson for offending Muslims.

Not a word passed his lips about the offence the grotesque garment called the burqa gives to womankind.

'First, Brandis — and Senators of the Left — savaged Hanson for
wearing a burqa, but many voters would know these same MPs would have
applauded the “courage” of a Muslim MP wearing that alienating sack.

Second, Brandis dangerously elevated the burqa as an important symbol of Islam — a “religious garment”.

Labor’s Penny Wong was as bad, praising the wearing of the burqa as a “sincere act of faith”.

That’s troubling.

Apologists
used to claim the burqa was just a backward tribal thing that did not
represent nice and sweet Islam at all. But now it apparently does.

Third,
Brandis, voice cracking with emotion, then got to the heart of his
problem with Hanson’s burqa, and this is not just troubling but
alarming.

“It has been the advice of each
Director-General of security … and each Commissioner of the Australian
Federal Police with whom I have worked that it is vital for their
intelligence and law enforcement work that they work cooperatively with
the Muslim community,” he blustered.

“To ridicule that community, to drive it into a corner, to mock its religious garments is an appalling thing to do.”

Let me translate: do not mock or criticise the burqa or more Muslims will attack us.

Sorry,
but I don’t want us cowed by such threats. The burqa is an abomination,
and no threats should stop me from asserting this feminist truth.

Does anyone tell gay activists to stop dressing up as nuns or Christians may blow us up?

What Brandis has in fact said is that Muslims are dangerous, and the burqa represents them.

I hope Brandis is just exaggerating the extremism of most Muslims.

But I certainly know he’s kowtowing to a radical minority who want their women bagged and hidden from view.

That is unacceptable....'

Sure is. But I'd make an additional point regarding these politicians' motives; they're out to catch Muslim votes, and (as with these pro-Islam wets representing the churches) if women's rights, welfare and dignity have to be sacrificed in order to achieve that aim, then so be it.

Leftist hypocrisy regarding feminism and Islam can be clearly seen in many of the comments on Bolt's article.One earnest leftist tells those who agree with Pauline Hanson on this issue that they belong in Victorian Britain. O, how laughable (that is, if it were not so very sad!) A male apologist for that misogynistic oppressive garment the burqa telling those who oppose it that they (and not he) belong in a time and place where women (like females under Sharia today) were in subjugation to patriarchal tyranny!

Inevitably, among the champions of burqa-wearing was Greens leader Richard Di Natale, that weaselly foe of Israel, pictured below (front centre) with some buddies.

As a doctor of medicine, Di Natale cannot be ignorant of the danger to unborn babies the wearing by pregnant women of a garment that blocks out sunshine poses: he has obviously heard of rickets and its causes. I suppose he's happy with the advice that burqa-clad women compensate by dosing themselves with milk fortified with Vitamin D.But what about the deleterious effect on women's comfort and eyesight that accompanies being encased in a stifling sack and forced to peer at the world through a grill made of mesh.Perhaps Senator Hanson should borrow somebody's Fluffy or Fido next time, put its head in a burqa, and watch the reaction of senators to that.I'll wager that they'll label as cruelty to animals (and rightly so) the cruelty they are content to have women endure.(Unless, in the case of Fido, they recall something about Muslims considering dogs unclean, of course.)

Thursday, 17 August 2017

Last week, an American nutjob (I can be fairly certain that he or she is American owing to the spelling used) left a hateful comment below one of the posts on this blog:

'Why do Jews hate free speech so much? For example, Mark Zuckerberg, a jew, will censor anything politically incorrect on Facebook and block you from posting for 30 days. Or what about the so called Holocaust? Why aren't we allowed to QUESTION if this "event" actually happened? There is zero physical proof the Holocaust happened and a guy got put in jail in Germany for 7 FUCKING YEARS simply for writing a 44 page book called "Did 6 Million Really Die?"

The younger generation is not fooled by the lies of the Jews. Generation Z, that is people under 18, hang out at free speech sites like 4chan where they discuss the TRUTH. The TRUTH is that the Holocaust never happened, and that Jews control our media, educational institutions, medical industry, big pharma industry, government, and religious institutions. Basically, America and the West is living under a Jewish totalitarian state that HATES free speech.

What is going to happen when this younger generation grows up and truly realizes how badly they have been betrayed by Jews? The Holocaust never happened but already a lot of them, kids only 13 or 14 years old, are saying they wish the Holocaust did happen. You Jews are digging your own graves and the younger generation are not going to tolerate you Jewish fascists any more. Don't be surprised if a new Hitler comes into power as early as 2024 and solves the JEWISH problem once and for all, a FINAL solution. You Jews brought this on yourselves, you fascist scum.'

I allowed the post to remain, as a testament to evil. A subsequent commenter left this witty and incisive message:

'I suggest that this poster pick up his local yellow pages, turn to the section headed "Psychiatrists," and phone for an appointment.'

Yet when I showed the original comment to a friend, who yields to none in his yiddishkayt and his championship of Israel, he amazed me by expressing some sympathy for the nutjob's views.

"Not the stuff about the Holocaust, of course," my friend said hurriedly, "that's just mental, but about the suppression of free speech. Too many leftwing Jews try to stop others expressing fear over Islam in the West, smearing them as racists, that it gets people's backs up, and creates antisemitism."

"Well, yes," I conceded, " I myself was threatened with reporting to the Facebook authorities for a supposedly politically incorrect post about mass Muslim migration into Europe and its possible consequences, unless I deleted it."

I added the name of the person who had made the threat, an Australian Jew who has earned himself the nickname in some circles as Kim Jong-Un for his totalitarian attitude to what others should and should not be able to say online and his aptitude with the delete button.

"And there's this guy who heads the ADL in America who tries to prevent free speech by labelling people Islamophobes", went on my friend.

"I know! I knnow!That awful Jonathan Greenblatt," I interjected.

"Yes, well, that attitude stokes antisemitism," my friend replied.

He may have a point.

The destructive and dangerous leftist-impulse that impels American Jewish "leaders" such as Greenblatt to make common cause with Jewry's enemies is well-captured by the great Isi Leibler in his latest column. He warns that if this impulse goes on the community may find itself marginalised and on the political outer altogether, this, moreover, at a time when the Trump administration seems divided over Israel. Inter alia:

' ....Many Jewish leaders concentrate more on vilifying Trump than securing and promoting their communal interests. They unashamedly abuse their Jewish institutional roles to promote far-left and liberal agendas, even labeling their opponents as anti-Semites to achieve their goals....

Leftist antisemites and Israel-haters in Los Angeles

The threats from the radical Right must not be tolerated. Yet despite the massive exposure they received, these fascist and racist groups represent a minute segment of society and their influence is marginal when compared to the leftist anti-Semites. The latter, who are vastly understated, promote the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and have transformed campuses into anti-Israel and anti-Semitic platforms.

Moreover, there are Jewish community leaders who have allied themselves with far-left campaigns headed by vicious anti-Israel elements, arguing that anti-Israel agitators should not be excluded as partners in broader campaigns for social justice. There are also calls for BDS proponents and anti-Israel Jewish groups to be included in the “big tent.”

The worst organizational offender in this area is the Anti-Defamation League, which lost its credibility after Jonathan Greenblatt, a former aide to President Barack Obama, became CEO and used the organization to promote his liberal agenda. He is supported by leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements who uninhibitedly pursue partisan positions, as though their followers were all anti-Trump zealots. Their toleration of leftist anti-Israel agitators is frequently accompanied by public criticism of Israeli policies....

The ADL ...has been smearing conservatives as anti-Semites ...

There are many ... examples of acceptance of “progressive” anti-Zionists and anti-Semites ....

It is surely not surprising that, in this environment, access to the U.S. administration by Jewish leaders is lower than it has been in over 50 years....'

Tuesday, 15 August 2017

An obscure rural locality transformed by the Industrial Revolution, Oldham is a struggling former cotton mill town in Lancashire, now part of Greater Manchester.

Long gone are the days when a Conservative parliamentary candidate (Winston Spencer Churchill, no less, in 1900 during the Boer War) could be returned to Westminster for Oldham. (For its recent election results see here and here)

At least one in four (and climbing) of Oldham's inhabitants is of south Asian, mainly Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim, background.

Muslims predominate in certain areas of the town, and consequently, as their numbers have risen, so has their voting capacity in those areas and their political clout, with the first Muslim mayor of the town, Mr Ahmad Riaz, holding office from 2002-3. Since then there have been several other Muslim mayors: Mr Abdul Jabbar (2005), Mr Shoab Akhtar (2008-9), Mr Fid Hussain (2014-15), Mr Ateeque Ur-Rehman (2015-16), and the present incumbent, Mr Shadab Qumer (2017-18).

And a good thing too, some might say, proving that integration is at last proceeding in a polarised town not particularly known for the mixing of its old-stock majority and immigrant-stock minority "communities". (In 2001 there were serious race riots in Oldham. In 2005 fruitcake Nick Griffin of the BNP contested the Oldham West seat. In 2012 the town, along with neighbouring Rochdale, was affected
by one of the Muslim sex gang scandals that have plagued parts of Britain
but about which it has been, and largely is, deemed politically
incorrect to speak at length.)

It should go without saying that councils are elected to deal with local issues ("roads, rates and rubbish" in popular parlance), not matters of foreign policy, but from the Oldham council's archived press releases we learn that during Mr Hussain's mayoralty

'A delegation from Oldham has delivered a petition to 10 Downing Street calling for peace in Gaza.

Civic,
faith and community leaders presented the 8,303 name petition to a
government representative on Wednesday – it calls for an end to all
hostilities and the recall of Parliament so the crisis can be discussed
and humanitarian aid agreed.

The document, which could be signed
via the council website [emphasis added] and at sites across the borough, stated: “We,
the people of Oldham, call upon the United Kingdom government and the
European Union to act now to protect civilians on all sides and stop the
suffering in Gaza.”

National politicians are urged to use their influence to:

Stop the killing - by achieving an immediate, and sustained, ceasefire

Save lives - by ensuring access for the humanitarian aid needed by the people of Gaza

Deliver
peace and prosperity for the people of Palestine and Israel – by
securing commitment from all parties to a process of dialogue leading to
a just, long-term solution

Councillor Arooj Shah, Oldham Council’s Deputy Cabinet Member for Policy and Communications, led the delegation.

Cllr
Shah said: “Oldham has a history of supporting innocent civilians who
are suffering through war and conflict and I am proud that hundreds of
people from across the borough have pledged their support by signing
this petition.

“They are telling the government we want an
immediate end to the violence in Gaza and that we want our politicians
to use their influence to do all that they can to make this happen.

“This is a view shared by communities across Oldham, irrespective of ethnicity or faith.

“Hundreds of men, women and children have already lost their lives and this has to stop immediately.”

An event to discuss the conflict and how local people can make a difference is also planned before the end of September.'

The fact that the Left dominates in Oldham is certainly not irrelevant to the above.

'Oldham Council has hosted a summit looking at how residents can help
those suffering through conflict and prevent war damaging community
relations in Britain.

‘Making a difference: A
conference to discuss local responses to international conflict’ was
held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Sunday, October 19 with more than
120 people in attendance.

The need for the conference
was identified as a result of concerns from residents about the recent
conflict between Israel and Palestine in Gaza. [Emphasis added]

Its aims
were to increase the ability of borough residents to respond to
international conflict in practical and peaceful ways which aim to stop
violence, offer humanitarian assistance and encourage just and lasting
peace settlements....'

Nor to the truly jaw-dropping initiative of the council on 27 July this year in the wake of the Manchester terrorist atrocity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYmoCuUIQ2o

"At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow" goes a line in a Christian hymn. For Oldham council, it seems, "At the name of Allah, every head shall bow."

"Daffy-down-dilly" begins the line of a Mother Goose rhyme. Those silly women in particular have made geese of themselves.

They have bowed their blonde heads to a creed that considers persons of their gender inherently inferior.

I wonder how many of them, and of the other councillors present, scoff at Christianity as patriarchal and superstitious (a not insignificant percentage of agnostics and atheists there, I'd wager), yet have allowed themselves to show obeisance to Islam.

These foolish geese have been the willing victims of da'awaWhy did they not insist on an ecumenical event instead of an Islamic supremacist one?

No doubt they have been hoodwinked by the imam's statement "The Quran says whoever kills a body unlawfully or for creating disorder
in the land it is as if he has killed the entire of mankind" into thinking that Islam originated that precept.

It is, of course, a precept of Judaism, made long long before Islam adapted it:

“Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire
world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an
entire world.” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:9; Babylonian Talmud, Tractate
Sanhedrin 37a)

I seldom look at Pamela Geller's site, much less quote anything by her, but it's worth noting her comments on this extraordinary event in Oldham:

'The imam is parsing the quote taken from verse 5:32 of the “Holy Koran.” But he is ripping it out of context and perverting its meaning. The full passage in the Koran applies to the “Children of Israel,” not to Muslims. And it’s followed in the Koran by 5:33, which calls for “execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land” for those who “wage war against Allah and his messenger, or spread mischief in the land.”

At minute 1:56, the imam cites the daily prayer that curses Jews (those who have angered Allah) and Christians (those who have gone astray).

"The Islamic daily prayers include repeated recitations of al-Fatihah, the first chapter of the Qur’an. In these few verses, every Muslim prays that they will be guided on the straight path, not like the Christians (‘those who have gone astray’) or the Jews (‘those who incur Allah’s wrath’). This simple contrast, that whereas Christians have lost their way, Jews have fallen under the anger of Allah, neatly summarizes Islam’s attitude to the Jews. The celebrated commentator Ibn Kathir, whose translated tafsir is popular among English-speaking Muslims, explains the distinction in his discussion of al-Fatihah:

These two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them. … the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why ‘anger’ descended upon the Jews, while being described as ‘led astray’ is more appropriate of the Christians. Those who know, but avoid implementing the truth, deserve the anger, unlike those who are ignorant. The Christians want to seek the true knowledge, but are unable to find it because they did not seek it from its proper resources.

This is why they were led astray. We should also mention that both the Christians and the Jews have earned the anger and are led astray, but the anger is one of the attributes more particular of the Jews. Allah said about the Jews, ‘Those (Jews) who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath’ ([Sura] 5:60). The attribute that the Christians deserve most is that of being led astray, just as Allah said about them, ‘Who went astray before and who misled many, and strayed (themselves) from the right path’ ([Sura] 5:77).

Despite the inherent misogyny, homophobia and assorted hateful and repugnant verses within the Koran, our unquestioning and uncritical councillors meekly bow their heads as the imam leads them in prayers.

Monday, 14 August 2017

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

President Trump’s attempt to end the Jewish-Arab conflict could well hinge on Israel, Jordan, the PLO and Trump defining the boundaries of former Palestine under the 1922 Mandate for Palestine (Mandate territory).

Defining the territory within which the competing claims of Jews and Arabs must be resolved is a first prerequisite to ending a conflict that has raged for the last 100 years.

False claims still continue to be made that Israel comprises more than 75 per cent of the Mandate territory whilst Judea and Samaria (West Bank), East Jerusalem and Gaza comprise the remaining 25 per cent. The latest such misleading claim appeared in the following article:

“On the 14 of May 1948, the state of Israel was declared. By the time Israel and the Arab States signed the Armistice agreement in 1948, Israel had gained control over 75 per cent of mandate Palestine.”

The article further asserts that the 1967 Six Day War was:

“the beginning of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and annexation of East Jerusalem, territories which together made up the remaining 22 per cent of Mandate Palestine.”

The article fails to inform readers that:

1. In 1946, 78 per cent of the Mandate territory became a sovereign independent Arabs-only, Jew-free State called the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan – renamed Jordan in 1950

2. Israel is only 17 per cent of the Mandate territory

3. Judea and Samaria (West Bank), East Jerusalem and Gaza comprise the remaining 5 per cent of the Mandate territory.

Israel, the PLO and Jordan have each separately acknowledged this geographically-accurate territorial subdivision of former Palestine- as the following statements make clear:

1. Abba Eban – Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations – said in Newsweek on 2 December 1974:

"Palestine comes into modern history as a region extending on both sides of the Jordan, comprising the present sovereign territories of Israel and Jordan and the administered areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Of this original Palestine, 80 per cent became an exclusively Arab domain through the separation of Trans-Jordan from Palestine."

2. Yasser Arafat – the first PLO Chairman – told the New York Review of Books on 25 June 1987:

"Jordan and Palestine until 1945 were one State, actually. After the Second World War, Churchill himself said, “This is Transjordan, and this is Palestine. Before that Jordan was an emirate …completely part of Palestine”

3. Transjordan’s King Abdullah addressed the Arab League meeting in Cairo on 12 April 1948:

“Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country”

Many more similar statements exist from Jewish, Arab and other sources.

If Trump concludes that a second Arab State – in addition to Jordan – is required in the Mandate territory – then Jordan – not only Israel, Judea and Samaria (West Bank), East Jerusalem and Gaza – should be included in determining that third State’s possible location.

However such a second Arab State – if governed by the PLO – the sole spokesman for the Palestinian Arabs since 1974 – would pose an existential threat to the continued existence of both Jordan and Israel as sovereign independent States – since Article 2 of the PLO Charter expressly states:

“Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.”

One Jewish State and two Arab States in the territory of the Mandate will exacerbate – not resolve – the conflict.

Jordan – 78 percent of the Mandate territory – must be part of any territorial resolution.

Territorial negotiations – like gridiron and basketball – can only be played out within clearly designated boundaries.

Defining Palestine’s boundaries is indeed the key to Trump succeeding where all others have failed.

'The number of people suspected of Islamic radicalization in France has risen by 60% in two years, reports Le Figaro.

The daily said that there are currently 18,550 cases within the Fichier des Signalements pour la Prévention et la Radicalisation à Caractère Terroriste (FSPRT), which collects reports from the prefect’s office, the police, gendarmerie and the public. Managed by the interior ministry, the system was set up in March 2015 and during the period of the Paris attacks in the same year there were 11,400 people listed.'

Friday, 11 August 2017

"I'm a servant of the Lord," explains British businessman Gerald Ronson, a Jew "in my soul and in my heart". His two oldest grandchildren live in Israel.

From 2:20 in this J-TV video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mffNvF8QR3g) he tells what compelled him to found the Community Security Trust (CST) and from 3:20 he declares his belief that were Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister antisemitism in Britain would increase:

That antisemitism has become more brazen in Britain than at any stage since the Second World War is seen in this article by the great Melanie Phillips regarding Corbynista Jackie Walker's shameful one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Tuesday, 8 August 2017

By Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, and Michaela Frai, a research associate there, a disturbing article on Iranian influence in South America:

'Across the region, Iranian preachers and their local enablers have
presented themselves as advocates of human rights and social justice to
gain footholds among disenfranchised and marginalized communities in
Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru. Relying on
allies such as Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, Iran has
established forward operating bases for the spread of their propaganda.'

The article focuses first on the visit to São Paulo, Brazil of Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, 'who openly calls for the “annihilation of Zionism” and has promoted friendly relations with the Taliban':

'Araki’s visit is yet another demonstration of how the Iranian regime is busy exporting its own brand of radical Islam, in order to radicalize Shi’a expatriate communities while spreading Tehran’s influence in the region.

The hosts for Araki’s lecture in Brazil on July 29th were none other than local Hezbollah-linked religious centers that promote Iran’s Islamic revolution. Guests from across the continent included Latin American and Iranian clerics who are disciples of Mohsen Rabbani, Iran’s former cultural attaché in Latin America and the mastermind of Argentina’s 1994 AMIA terrorist attack that left 85 dead at a Jewish center.

Since the 1980s, Tehran has worked diligently to create the infrastructure for both overt and covert operations in the Western Hemisphere. Araki’s visit is part of a well-orchestrated plan to indoctrinate and radicalize existing Shi’a communities while seeking new acolytes among local sympathizers of Iran’s political agenda.'

The authors then describe the baneful impact of Peruvian indigenous rights activist and convert to Shi'a Islam Edwar Quiroga Vargas, founder of several 'Inkarri-Islam' Shi'te cultural centres Inkarri-Islam, and the antisemitism inherent he espouses and promotes. Alarmingly,

'Quiroga is not an isolated phenomenon, and not only because since 2011, he has opened five more cultural centers across Peru and overseen nearly twenty-five students who have traveled to Iran to attend Rabbani’s religious programs in Qom. Iranian cultural centers and their Iranian-trained local converts promote a similar radical agenda across Latin America and, indeed, globally....

Ultimately, Iran threatens the national security of the U.S. and its allies with its spread of anti-Zionist hatred and Islamic revolutionary rhetoric to the Western Hemisphere. The networks established by Iran do not just promote hate speech; they are intimately involved in criminal enterprises such as narco-trafficking to generate tens of millions of dollars to fund Hezbollah and other Iranian clients....'

'Outside of the United States and Western Europe, Pentecostal Chris­tianity has witnessed massive growth since 1980. The advance of Pentecostalism in the Global South constitutes one of the biggest religious developments in the late twentieth century. Brazil and Nigeria have seen the rate of Protestant identification double or triple in recent decades. Many new churches and denominations preach a version of the prosperity gospel that combines individualistic and nation-based blessings. Christian Zionism is often central to Pentecostal understandings of nation-based blessings.

This is true for Renê Terra Nova, currently director of ICEJ in Brazil. Born into a Catholic family, Terra Nova converted to Pentecostal Christianity at the age of twenty and began to attend the Baptist Theological Seminary of North Brazil. In 1990 he broke away from his first church and founded First Baptist Church of the Restoration in Manaus. In his teaching and more than a dozen books, Terra Nova emphasizes “family restoration,” a concept that is flexible enough to relate both to Brazilians’ personal families and to healing God’s family, composed of Jews and Christians. As his website explains, Terra Nova takes as a sacred duty his ministry’s “work in spreading love for Israel and the true root of our faith: ­Jerusalem.” Terra Nova’s literal connection to ­Jerusalem through the massive “caravan” tour groups he leads underpins his emphasis on the prosperity gospel. Through “showing the way to ­Jerusalem,” Terra Nova has “raised the spiritual level of the people, showing that poverty, misery and ruin are stigmata of the past and that the great truth is prosperity: a right of every child of God.” He claims to lead a congregation of 75,000, with church branches throughout central and northern Brazil.'

Remember, though, one of their leaders, Dr Luis Fernadez Soares of Guatemala, 'expressed concern" at the 2017 Herzliya Conference in June

'regarding the challenges faced by South American Christians who openly express solidarity with Israel in countries “governed by leftist leaders,” who have close relations with Arab nations as well as Iran and the Palestinians.

Solares suggested that evangelical institutions increase their cooperation across countries where they are represented, in addition to ramping up ties with Israeli embassies and local Jewish communities. Israel should foster closer relations with evangelical communities in Latin America and “ask them to pray for Israel and place Israeli flags in their congregations'.

Meanwhile, from Bethlehem, one who has long been doing his utmost to undermine Christian Zionism round the globe and who is, incidentally, no stranger to Teheran and to the London studios of Iran's propagandistic Press TV, has been posting numerous photos of scenes from his recent trip to the West Bank (he's just flown back to the UK). He's gone for glorious Technicolor in most of them, as with the mural portrait below of the murderous old rogue Arafat.

(Hero of yours, Mr Sizer???):

Flatters the old rogue, eh?:

But one sequence of photos is not in colour:

Unusually, I'm glad to see and say, the vicar has not attracted mere yes-men with this particular propagandistic exercise. Certainly, there are the usual suspects, who have hastened to share the Ashrawi quotation, but one commenter boldly differs (at the time of posting this no response from Sizer on there has been forthcoming):

"This wall is to stop terror attacks on civilians while we all wait for genuine negotiations. While we wait, should Israel just accept the murder of its people? Yes, the wall inconveniences some Palestinians, but it also saved Israeli lives. Is Palestinian inconvenience a higher priority than Israeli lives?? What an immoral proposition!"

And another commenter, a Facebook friend of Sizer, contends:

"I don't recall black people calling for the eradication of white people, or black people continuously bombing, kniving, shooting and threatening white people. I think apartheid was something very different. Yes the wall is a tragedy. The situation though is very complex. You may see oppression of a suffering people. Others see necessary self protection of a vulnerable state.Remember the holocaust."

A person with an Arabic name replies: 'Umkhonto We Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”)'

To which this answer is given:

"Nope. Totally different thing! That was an armed uprising against a pre existing apartheid. Israel meanwhile is trying to protect itself from nearly a century of threat to the jewish people and half a century of denial of its political right to exist."

The commenter continues, taking on several Sizerites, who are unused to dissent on Sizer's thread and who include a woman who declares that "Zionist Jews" were responsible for the Holocaust:

"I quite agree that Israel AND the Palestinians (And surrounding Arab nations) need to do a lot more and a lot better ... BUT ... it is language like "apartheid" here, which does absolutely nothing for either the real historic apartheid of black people, OR for the complex issues facing Israel and the Palestinian people....

Bus bombs, knife attacks, rocket launches, decades of denouncing the state of Israel's right to exist, vitriolic hatred of the Jewish people, repeated statements of surrounding nations to wipe the state of Israel from the earth, ... yes ... the core issues are complex....

[M]y point here was merely that this is not apartheid.

Also,in regard to Hamas and the PA - they may well have verbally recognised the state of Israel's right to exist, but they have done very little to cease the hostilities...

Palestinians are not merely segregated for racial purposes. Not at all. They are segregated for security purposes with very real and very tangible reasons all proven in his with very real and very tangible reasons all proven in historical fact. Apartheid ONLY segregates for racial purposes... The situation is about security first and foremost. And while the "optic" may focus on the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis, there needs to be a widening of that optic to see the treatment of Israel by surrounding Arab nations - who themselves first mistreated those same Palestinians as well and are themselves culpable for the continuing threat towards Israel and the continuing mistreatment of the Palestinians."

Seems to me that that friend of Sizer's should be on the "Board of Reference" of Sizer's so-called "Peacemaker Mediators" instead of the dyed-in-the-wool anti-Israel types who loom large there.

Monday, 7 August 2017

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

President Trump continues to ponder the way forward to end the 100-years-old conflict between Arabs and Jews – as negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – stalled since April 2014 – show no sign of being resumed.

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap - endorsed by Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - were consigned to the graveyard of history after PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas unilaterally disbanded the Palestinian Authority on 3 January 2013.

White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner has been quoted in an off-the-record discussion saying:

"there may be no solution".

There may however be a solution should Jordan and Egypt – Israel’s immediate neighbours – agree to negotiate with Israel to end the Jewish-Arab conflict.

Filling this potentially explosive negotiating void with Jordan and Egypt will require Trump to first articulate:

1. the parameters and

2. The fact-based framework

within which such new negotiations should actually be undertaken

The parameters should be restricted to resolving the competing Arab and Jewish claims to sovereignty in the remaining 5 per cent of the territory of the former Mandate for Palestine – Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), East Jerusalem and Gaza – where internationally-recognised sovereignty still remains undetermined (“the disputed territories”).

Conflicting narratives paralysing previous negotiations must be replaced by Trump with a different fact-based framework underpinning any new negotiations – including:

1. Jordan and Egypt:

· signatories to peace treaties with Israel in 1994 and 1979 respectively and

· the last Arab States to occupy the disputed territories between 1948 and 1967

are the best Arab interlocutors to determine with Israel the allocation of sovereignty in the disputed territories.

2. The PLO Charter calling for the destruction of both Israel and Jordan disqualifies the PLO from participating in such new negotiations.

3. Hamas – designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel and banned in Jordan – must be excluded from these new negotiations.

4. The new negotiations are being undertaken to resolve the “Jewish-Arab conflict” that began in 1915 – not “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” that began in 1948

5. Sovereignty in the territory of the Mandate for Palestine has already been granted to Israel (17 per cent), Jordan (78 per cent) – with sovereignty in Judea and Samaria [West Bank], East Jerusalem and Gaza (5 per cent) still undetermined.

6. The Jewish people is legally entitled to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in the disputed territories by close settlement under Article 6 of the 1922 Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter – subject to the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities living there being safeguarded.

7. Misleading and deceptive language referring to the disputed territories as “occupied territory” or “Occupied Palestinian Territories” fail to recognise that it was Jewish occupation in the disputed territories that was first abruptly ended in 1948 – after every single Jew then living there was forcibly driven out by six invading Arab armies and not allowed to return until after the Six Day War in 1967.

Trump has a hard row to hoe in formulating this critical framework – but do it he must if there is to be any hope of advancing peace in the Middle East.

Such Trump-defined parameters and fact-based framework need to then be mutually agreed by Jordan, Egypt and Israel before formal negotiations can commence.

Any fanfare trumpeting yet another round of negotiations without such tripartite agreement will inevitably see those new negotiations being eventually buried alongside the graves housing the failed Oslo-Roadmap and stalled Israel-PLO negotiations.

Trump, Israel, Jordan and Egypt working together can certainly succeed where Obama and the PLO ignominiously failed.

Friday, 4 August 2017

Our old friend the ex-vicar of Virginia Water has landed in the land he loves to slur, and is now in Bethlehem.

Surprised Israel let him in?

In answer to one of his followers who expressed that very thought, our old friend has paid unwitting tribute to the strength of Israeli tolerance and forbearance:

I'd like to share with this Israel-delegitimiser and so-called "Peacemaker Mediator," who seems to evince no sympathy whatever for Jewish links to ancient holy places (remember this?), the words of a rationally-minded Jerusalem-based rabbi from the Reform tradition on Tisha b'Av this very week:

'Twenty five hours of darkness...Twenty five hours of memory...Twenty five hours of recalling how they poured out our blood...At this hour, we hold in our hearts centuries of Jews persecuted just for being Jews ... tortured, scorned, and driven to pitiless deaths.And we remember the Temples...One thousand years of devotion...One thousand years of encountering God on earth in the heart of Jerusalem.These are facts of history ... facts that today are tragically denied by much of the Palestinian leadership.They say that the Temples are a matter of “belief”.They refuse to accept that centuries before Islam, Jews worshiped God in beautiful structures on that noble mount for more than a millennium.They will not acknowledge the slaughter, the destruction, and the gruesome losses that Jews experienced.Know this:Deniers of history do not genuinely seek peace.Those who seek to delegitimise the other, and the facts of the past, have little familiarity with olive branches.There is one thing even more painful than the memories of this day:That on this day of memory, there are those who seek to deny that our memories have any validity at all.And so we fast. For the past ... and the present...'

Wednesday, 2 August 2017

Hot on the heels of the BDS Conference that has just taken place at the University of Sydney, with the usual suspects in place, comes notification by Israel-bashers and -haters Down Under of another chin-wagging onslaught against the Jewish State.

Under the auspices of AFOPA (the Australian Friends of Palestine Association), it's due to take place in Adelaide in late November:

'This year, 2017, marks important anniversaries pertaining to the issue of Palestine. It is the 100 year anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, 100 years of Australian involvement in Palestine, and 50 years of Israeli Occupation. The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement set the scene by carving up the region into the modern Middle East, and the 1956 Suez Crisis highlighted the geo-political importance of the region. Collectively these significant events have influenced the destiny of the Palestinians and the inhabitants of the region, shaped international and Australian involvement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

This three-day symposium seeks to examine Palestine and the West: History, Contemporary Realities and Challenges Ahead.

The focus of this academic symposium will be Palestine in the context of the West, and not the West in the context of Palestine. The central theme will be Palestine, its past, present, and its future.

Historical interventions and their impact on Palestinians will set the scene of the theme of this symposium. Experts in the field will examine the impact of these interventions on contemporary realities within the Palestinian territories and among Palestinians wherever they are found. The symposium will examine Palestine in context of the MENA region from both micro and macro levels. It will cover international and regional developments and their impact on Palestinians within the Palestinian territories, within Israel, those exiled or living in neighbouring countries, or the Diaspora. The impact of 50 years of Israeli occupation, or almost 70 years of Palestinian displacement since 1948 will also be addressed.

The challenges ahead for Palestinians and the prospects of a just and peaceful resolution will be discussed, as will possible solutions to resolving this core international conflict.

The Symposium will be inviting a number of Australian and international guests, each scholars or experts in their fields, including:

Mr Gideon Levy, acclaimed journalist with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who will deliver the keynote annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture;

'The
University of Sydney has distanced itself from a controversial Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions conference being hosted by its Department of
Peace and Conflict Studies, after members of the Jewish community
labelled the gathering an “anti-Israel hate-fest”.

The
department is holding the conference on July 28-29 in conjunction with
lobby group Sydney University Staff for BDS and a range of
pro-Palestinian organisations. Conference events include a speech on
Palestinian rights under Donald Trump by US Campaign for Palestinian
Rights executive director Yousef ­Munayyer, a paper by pro-BDS academic
Jake Lynch on the pro-Israel influence in Australia, and a panel
discussing anti-Semitism with pro-BDS Jewish speakers Peter ­Slezak,
Marcello Svirsky and Vivienne Porzsolt....

...and students take their seats while Hage awaits his cue

NSW
Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff said the
obsessive focus on BDS by the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies
ignored the reality that it does nothing to advance a resolution to the
conflict.

“Then there is the irony that the organisers have scheduled a
discussion on working with the Jewish community for a Saturday,
automatically excluding ­observant Jews and demonstrating how tokenistic
any attempts to understand the Jewish community actually are,” he said.

A
spokeswoman for the University of Sydney said the institution was
strongly committed to academic freedom and to being a forum for debate
on a wide range of issues. “The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions policy
is not a university-endorsed policy.”'

If you're a glutton for punishment (Professor Ghassan Hage for one is a very boring speaker), you can read and see more about the conference here

Terror Groups Eyeing Israel's Destruction from inside NGOs

Two stalwarts go sleuthing:

For their findings cliick on image

"The research suggests that antisemitism is the fuel that primes the PSC engine"

To read the research report click on image

'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017)

'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.'Rod Liddle (2018)

Pro-Israel Down Under

Shalom and Welcome to my blog!I'm the little Aussie blogger who took the screenshot and broke the story of Stephen Sizer's notorious 9/11 post, and I've since broken two other stories that subsequently went viral, one Australia-wide and one, thanks to the sterling work of two other bloggers, worldwide. I remain very surprised and very honoured to have been co-winner, Best Pro-Israel Blog, Hasby Awards, 2013Please "Like" me on Facebook; my Facebook page ishere

'In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel ... is different.... Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.... Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East.' Bibi Netanyahu (20 Iyar 5771; 24 May 2011)Scroll to end for more quotations

Tired of anti-Balfour agitprop?

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Balfour and Beyond

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Try this for Sizer

Sizer 101. Click image for link

'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world.If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016)https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies

BDS is Antisemitic

Click image to learn why

The Bigotry & Immorality of BDS

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'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself. Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world. [L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world – even to demonise as “Islamophobic” anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016)

"Selling a house to a Jew is a betrayal of Allah"

To read more click image

Maps of Mendacity & Mischief

Click image to learn why

These misleading maps were deliberately prepared to date from 1946 – intentionally papering over the momentous events that had occurred between 1917 and 1945. Attempts to unravel binding precepts of international law established between 1917 and 1945 – and failing to insist on their being upheld and enforced – has a lot to do with the sorry situation the world finds itself in today.David Singer (2016)

How They Twist the Truth!

Click image for more on the lies

Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying... Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015)

Expose The Lies!

There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one – the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals can’t fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth.David Singer (2016)

Exposing Lies

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The "Apartheid" Slur

The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas “A”, “B” and “C” was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords.95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C.Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank.Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967.There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area “A”. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation – and subjugation – by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance. The narratives did not begin in 1948 – they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years?David Singer (2016)

Telling the Truth

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The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long.Andrew Roberts (historian)

A voice of courage & reason

He knows, y'know

An Aussie demo against BDS

On the left, black people are usually allowed to define what’s racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews they’re wrong, that they are exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy tactic – and to then treat them to a long lecture on what anti-Jewish racism really is. Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian, 29 April 2016)

An awkward fact for some!

Socialist thought was tainted from its very origins with the heavy baggage of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Robert Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel (2012)

BDS hypocrisy!

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Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case – aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries – about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: “It doesn’t matter what we say. The whole world is against us.” You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they won’t say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010)

Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety.Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973)

A nuclear Iran threatens our existence

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to history’s horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015)

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.Eric Hoffer (1968)

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אם תרצו , אין זו אגדה

Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968)

January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us...The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism...friendsofisraelinitiative.org

[I]t’s impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldn’t – if only opportunistically – seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can “never” be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs...Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013)

What has happened to the 800,000 Jews who lived for over 2000 years in the Arab lands ...? Where are they in Arab society today? You dare talk of racism when I can point with pride ... to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Chaim Herzog (6 Kislev 5736; 10 November 1975)

I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews.... I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And, disgusted by the antisemitism of many Europeans ... I am shamed by this shame that dishonours my country and Europe.Oriana Fallaci

For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar

Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves.Marcello Pera

Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies.George Weigel

Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse

The choice before us is not between victory and defeat, but between victory and annihilation. We therefore have not the slightest intention of allowing the re-creation of the conditions of vulnerability in which we found ourselves, abandoned and alone, in the summer of 1967. Diplomat Michael Comay (1970)

I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola

About Me

I'm a writer/researcher, with many academic books and articles under my own name. Daphne Anson is my blogging alias. Combining the names of two ships, it's a moniker of special significance to me - I'm a naval history buff. I use an alias owing to a perceived need to keep my blogging and professional identities separate. An Aussie, I've long been interested in
politics and foreign affairs, having studied International Relations in the USA and Britain for my first degree, and I also hold a doctorate. I began blogging in response to the exponential rise in antisemitism and hostility to Israel in the wake of the Mavi Marmara affair.
Another reason I use an alias: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/08/alias-two-ships-daphne-anson.html

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The spiritual awakening which Jews experienced almost without exception last June must not be allowed to become a sealed and finished episode.... Support must be rallied among men of goodwill and their governments if we are to reach that secure and just peace in the attainment of which Israel has never ceased to believe. President Zalman Shazar (1968)

Our judicial system is one of the best in the whole world. Our democracy is the only one in the Middle East.... Just imagine, what would have happened if the Arabs had, like us, accepted the Partition resolution? There would be a Palestinian State living side by side in peace, security, and, I can add, prosperity with the State of Israel, 62 years later. [C]ome to Israel, and realize how small Israel is and what a wonderful place it is. Diplomat Gabriella Shalev (2010)

Israel's Arab citizens are the only Arabs in the Middle East who enjoy genuine civic and religious rights. Religious freedom is protected in Israel as nowhere else, tragically, in the Middle East. And civil rights, of course, there's a supreme court judge who is an Arab, ministers including in my government who are Arabs, Druze, and members of parliament who are Arabs and so on. I would like to see more involvement of Arabs in civil life.Bibi Netanyahu on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show (5 Nov. 2017)